Startup Events and Sport Events. The missing link

13Sep2014

| Last update:
06Oct2015

Two big events: startup events and sport ones. Two gatherings at which people come in bulk. Two events which attract a lot of advertising, expectation, nervousness. Both highly appealing. Their major points of difference occur in their theme and key public, even so, while attending Techsylvania this spring, which was held at the Cluj Arena, I couldn’t stop from wondering: so what stops these two events from joining forces and bringing streams of people to a one kind of event? What I want to discuss in today’s post is the missing link.

“Don’t schedule startup events when sport ones are due”

This is a piece of advice you hear many times, as it appears on the Organizers Guide on Startup Weekend. This happens because both the startup event and the sports one are popular events, so taking into consideration that you don’t want people who are into startups and into sports, to have to choose between the two of them, with the possibility of having less audience, you should be careful to consult local calendars. This is the case because the two events can’t be seen as making part of the bigger picture. You could never put a volley match and a tech startup event on the same day, at the same location, addressed to the same people and so on. But what if the two of them reached a compromise and you could keep the location, like it was the case with Cluj Arena, but schedule the sports at a different time from the startups’ presentations and discussions. This way the missing link would be somewhat solved, if you think that you could attract people both to startup events and to the sports ones. There could be special offers for those who attended both, prizes and different marketing strategies.

The perfect solution for the missing link

I think that a perfect combination would be to combine startup events with actual sport events. As Jason Fell puts it in his article, Startups born for a passion for sports, the great reason behind the $420 billion U.S. sports-related businesses is passion. So, why not host a sport event at the same time with a sports startup one, at which people who have a passion for sports come to attend, present projects, hold speeches and be part of discussions. This way the missing link between sport events and startup ones would be solved. Both the startups and sports could be advertised and people would get more attracted to this peculiar event. It would be unique and a powerful combination.

At such events, even players and coaches could hold speeches and sport startups could gather insight into their lives and needs, so that their buyer personas could be more adequate. It wouldn’t be necessary to give calls and summon these people, because they would already be there.

This is my way of solving the missing link between startup events and sport events. I think it’s the best solution, but I’m open to other opinions. What’s yours?